A few small Easter Raids in Wales - Part 3: PCB Pick Ups and an Afternoon in Barry Island

After leaving Electrocoin, we ventured down to Barry to visit Leisure Solutions UK Ltd.  

The company manufactures fruit machines, some of which are made for Electrocoin.  They also make replica arcade machines for the home market. Chris gave me the grand tour.

A familiar cab shape, albeit scaled down!

A Nintendo PlayChoice-10 in need of some love.

The area has a lot of arcade history.  Chris explained that back in the day, there used to be factories building BAS, Electrocoin and Silverline cabs nearby on Barry Docks, Cardiff and Bridgend.   “Did you see Neil, the old man with grey hair when you came in?” Chris asked.  “Well his claim to fame is designing the Electrocoin Duet cab.”  It seems there is so much UK arcade history undocumented, which is a real shame. 

There was a box of PCB’s from arcades on Barry Island.

Here is a list of titles.

1. Blockout – Technos Japan / PZKaren Co. Development Group - 1989

2. LiberoGrande – Namco - 1997

3. Mr. Do! – Universal - 1982

4. New Fantasia – Comrad - 1995

5. Street Fighter II

6. Street Fighter II’ Hyper Bootleg

7. Tecmo World Cup ’90 – Tecmo - 1989

It took me a little while to identify LiberoGrande, a football game running on Namco System 12 hardware.  It had been stored in a Street Fighter III kit box. The harness and manual were still present, but sadly there was no sign of the game.

Starting to fill up.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on Barry Island seafront.  It was nice to see that they still had some video games in the arcades, including games from the noughties as well as the new Halo: Fireteam Raven.

Released in 2008, Sega Race TV was the last game developed by Yu Suzuki during his time at Sega.  I’ve never come across one before, and I was a bit gutted to find both sides of the cab not working.